In recent years, the manufacturing line for semiconductor devices in which this type of wet processing apparatus is used includes a plurality of units called bays in which treatment apparatuses with the same type of functions are brought together within a vast clean room. A layout that employs a job-shop system has become the mainstream. In the job-shop system, the bays are coupled together by a conveyance robot and a belt conveyer. As the workpiece treated in that manufacturing line, a wafer with a large diameter of, for example, 12 inches is used. In the production system, thousands of semiconductor chips are manufactured from one wafer.
However, with this job-shop system, in the case where a plurality of similar treatment processes are repeated, the conveyance within the bay or the conveyance distance between bays significantly increase in length, and the wait time increases. Thus, the manufacturing time and work in process increase, which leads to a cost increase. Therefore, the low productivity may become a problem as a manufacturing line for mass production of the workpieces. Therefore, instead of the conventional manufacturing line in the job-shop system, a manufacturing line in a flow-shop system is also proposed. In this manufacturing line, semiconductor treatment apparatuses are arranged in the order corresponding to the treatment processes.
While this manufacturing line in the flow-shop system is optimal for manufacturing singular products in large quantities, it is necessary to rearrange the installation of the respective semiconductor treatment apparatuses in the manufacturing line in the order corresponding to the treatment flow of the workpiece in the case where the manufacturing procedure (recipe) needs to be changed due to a change of products. However, this rearrangement for every change of product is not realistic considering labor and time for the rearrangement. Especially, under the circumstances in which huge semiconductor treatment apparatuses are fixedly disposed within the closed space that is the clean room, it is realistically impossible to rearrange the semiconductor treatment apparatuses every time.
There is the need for manufacturing semiconductor in very small quantities, for example, several pieces to several hundreds of pieces in a manufacturing unit for engineer samples or ubiquitous sensors. However, in a huge manufacturing line in the job-shop system or the flow-shop system described above, manufacturing semiconductor in very small quantities extremely reduces the cost performance. Therefore, other kinds of products need to be also manufactured in that manufacturing line.
However, when a wide variety of products are received at the same time for mixed production in that manner, the productivity of the manufacturing line further decreases with increasing number of types of products. As a result, in this huge manufacturing line, very small-quantity production and multiproduct production cannot be appropriately managed.
Therefore, Patent Literature 1 discloses a minimal fab system where one device is created on a 0.5 inch size (half-inch size) wafer basically, thus, a manufacturing process is configured of a plurality of portable unit process apparatuses to facilitate the rearrangement of the plurality of unit process apparatuses in the flow-shop and the job-shop. Accordingly, the minimal fab system appropriately manages very small-quantity production and multiproduct production.
Furthermore, Patent Literature 2 discloses a spin development apparatus as a development apparatus for the minimal fab system. The spin development apparatus slowly rotates a wafer with a rotation speed in which a developer does not spill from the wafer in a state where the developer is dropped on the wafer with an amount below an amount that the developer spills from the wafer.